Moby-Phobia (or Cetaphobia)

The other day I was at my parents' house for the weekend and I was snoozing on the couch. My father turns on the TV and flips to a nature channel show, which I start watching out of the corner of my eye. It starts out harmless enough, a mama mountain goat has a kid and they have to cross a river and the kid almost drowns. Cute, fun.

Then we switch to some bears, which is also fine. The bears are looking for food and then what comes along? A gray whale. A gray whale and her calf. And I start to get antsy.

You see, I "suffer" from a totally irrational fear of whales. I live in an area far from the ocean, and I always will. I have probably seen less than 10 whales in person in my life (I'm sure I went to zoos as a kid or something). But I'm terrified of these creatures.

Now there's a term for this called "Cetaphobia" which I think was invented by people on Tumblr. It is not a phobia you'll find in a real dictionary, it's something like-minded people seem to have come up with on the internet. You can argue about "is it real or isn't it" but the fact is, I'm afraid of whales and it looks like I'm not alone.

"What's wrong with you? Whales are beautiful, majestic creatures and we should appreciate them." Well to me, whales are the closest thing we have to sea monsters. I'm fairly confident that during my life we'll never have to deal with a Godzilla-esque situation (knock wood). So instead I worry about the giant animals that live in the giant ocean. [Side bar, I once had a dream where giant whales were flying over my neighborhood. It was terrifying.]

Ah, the ocean. Perhaps that's what I'm actually afraid of. It's so deep, like infinitely deep and who knows what kind of horrible shit lurks underneath it. What if the big blue whales we're used to are just the babies? What if there's like a deep sea diver that thinks he found the ocean floor but it's actually just the eyelid of a giant beast? And who knows when they'll turn on us?

Yeah, this is this stuff I'm afraid of. Monstro in Disney's Pinocchio? Horrifying. The Kraken in the Pirates of the Caribbean films? Get out of here. If I ever go to Scotland, I will go nowhere near Loch Ness because I believe that freaking monster is real. Is it just a tree branch? How can you be sure? What if it's literally a dinosaur that's survived for thousands of years and reproduces asexually?

Sorry, back to the whales. Going back to the nature program my father was watching: the gray whale was a mama and it was migrating alongside its calf. Which is fine, they're whales but there's just two of them and they're migrating. I thought they were gross but I could handle watching them.

And then shit got real.

A pack of killer whales (or orca, if you will) approach the mama Gray and her calf. The ominous narrator informs me that the pack is hunting and will not go after the mama because she is too large. They're going after the calf. They seperate the calf from its mama, attack it, and then pull it underwater where it drowns. The corpse sinks to the bottom of the sea, where the killer whales will feed off of it for days.

Yeah, your beautiful creatures just killed a baby. How majestic.

I know they're called killer whales for a reason so I'm just bewildered at the fact that these animals are the main attraction at Seaworld. I know, animals like lions are also predators and they're always at the circus. Well I don't care much for the circus either because I don't think the animals are enjoying themselves. I'm not a huge animal rights activist or anything but I just think if I were an elephant I'd rather be rolling around in the mud than have a bunch of strange little kids crying on my back.

But seriously, killer whales at Seaworld? Jumping through hoops and eating fish or whatever they do to entertain people? (I haven't been to Seaworld since I was a little tyke, and there's no way in hell I'm going as an adult). What's going on with this? These animals are huge predators, that's dangerous right?

I did a little searching into this, mainly on youtube. Because for some reason when something freaks me out, I get in moods where I want to freak out and force myself to watch shit that scares me. Then I learned about Tilikum, an old bull orca who's been at Sea World for years and has been involved with three deaths in his time there.

Two of those deaths were trainers; one was tag-teamed by Tilikum and two females while the other could possibly have been an accident. But the other death involved a man sneaking into the tank after the park closed. Apparently he wanted to swim with the whales. He was found dead and naked draped over Tilikum's back the next morning. I imagine Tilikum was smoking a cigar and saying "Look at this moron." in a smug voice.

To get serious, though, I should say I'm not "anti-whale". I don't think they should be hunted (who needs more blubber, am I right ladies?) or anything and I don't think the ones stuck in Sea World should be trapped there their whole lives.  I'm just saying I don't see the beauty and the grace in them. I see sea monsters. And when I hear about a beached whale all I think is "they're getting closer. Soon they'll have mastered walking on land."

But no worries. I'm dealing with living with Cetaphobia, one day at a time. Frankly, it's not a terribly crippling phobia, like agoraphobia or claustrophobia. I suppose if I were ever on a deserted island and everything I wanted was on a separate island and the sea between us was full of whales...yeah that would be an issue. Until then, feel free to roll your eyes at me.